Thursday, November 6, 2014

2014 Cup of China Preview/Predictions

Get your (figurative) Cup of China ready with your beverage of choice... here comes the preview!

ICE DANCE PREDICTIONS

Gold—Cappellini/Lanotte
(ITA)

Silver— Shibutanis (USA)

Bronze—Papadakis/Cizeron
(FRA)

Dark Horse:
Ilinykh/Zhiganshin (RUS)

With the exception of the Shib Sibs, I haven’t yet seen any
of this CoC ice dance field this season. That makes it a little tough to
predict; I can’t even lean on personal preferences! So I’m going on
reputation... which means reigning World Champs Cappellini/Lanotte should have
a fairly easy time of it, and the Shibs stand a good chance of being
runners-up. I’ll say the young French team for bronze, if only because I’ve no
idea what to expect from the new Russian pairing of Ilinykh/Zhiganshin...
except that one of them has an Olympic Bronze Medal. So, potential abounds...
dark horse vote it is!

LADIES PREDICTIONS

Gold—Julia
Lipnitskaia (RUS)

Silver—Elizaveta
Tuktamysheva (RUS)

Bronze—Polina Edmunds
(USA)

Dark Horse: Li Zijun
(CHN) or Kanako Murakami (JPN)

The Best in Boneless Skating returns! Lipnitskaia makes her
GP season debut in China
with an R&J (Romeo & U-no-who)
free skate planned. She’s another sight-unseen choice for gold here;
Tuktamysheva has had a great season so far but was finally starting to look a little tired at Skate America a couple
weeks ago. Probably still good for silver, though. At bat for the U.S. is
Polina Edmunds in her first-ever senior GP event, and I think she’ll do
well—after all she’s already got one international victory under her belt this
season (U.S. International Classic). The other U.S.
ladies in attendance—Christina Gao and Ashley Cain—are relative wild cards,
with only Cain having made an earlier appearance this season (3rd at
Ondrej Nepala Trophy).

MEN PREDICTIONS

Gold—Yuzuru Hanyu
(JPN)

Silver—Yan Han (CHN)

Bronze—Maxim Kovtun (RUS)

Dark Horse: Nam Nguyen (CAN) or Richard Dornbush (USA)

Get out your Winnie-the-Pooh box of Kleenex, because our
reigning OGM is back in action starting this weekend! And get ready for POTO (Phantom of the Opera) Hanyu-style,
because that’s his FS music this season. (SIGH.) I don’t have a good enough
case for any of his competitors to force an upset, but if he loses, we’ll
surely get into it in great detail next week. In the meantime, have you seen
the FS selections for the others I’ve listed here? They include “Fly Me to the
Moon” for Yan (not the Sinatra version though)... Coldplay selections for
Dornbush, in what I found to be a surprisingly good program when I saw it...
and would you believe “Exogenesis: Symphony” by Muse for Kovtun? I’ve no idea
how similar the cuts are to what Jeremy Abbott used in what now has to be
considered one of his most iconic programs, but I guess we’re about to see how
the pieces fit on a new athlete—ready or not.

PAIRS PREDICTIONS

Gold—Peng/Zhang (CHN)

Silver—Bazarova/Deputat
(RUS)

Bronze—Calalang/Sidhu
(USA)

Dark Horse: Della
Monica/Guarise (ITA)

Take a look at the eight entries in this division and you’ll
likely say the same thing as I did: Who
the heck are these people? The only noteworthy team is Peng/Zhang, and the
only note I took watching them at Skate America was “underwhelmed”. Still,
they’ll probably prove to be the best of the bunch. I put Bazarova/Deputat
second simply on recognition of Vera Bazarova’s name (Deputat is a new partner
for her), and even Calalang/Sidhu of the U.S.
doesn’t bring a lot of name recognition. But if they manage a medal at CoC this
weekend, that could change in a hurry.

Coverage starts on IceNetwork at 3AM ET Friday... I will NOT be up that early, but should
definitely be watching (and live-Tweeting, and yawning) by the time the Men’s
SP starts 3 ½ hours later. Follow me @KLBSt8ofSk8 or use #COC14 to follow the
whole event!

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About Me

By day, I write and/or do production for clients in corporate video and B2B magazines. But I've also written for PSA (Professional Skaters Association) Magazine and SKATING (official USFS publication)... with more to come!